During recent years, a major drive in surgery has been the development and application of minimally invasive approaches to traditional operations. In general surgery, an emphasis has been on laparoscopic techniques, which can now be applied to a majority of intra-abdominal procedures. The resulting reduction in trauma to the abdominal wall has a positive impact on patients undergoing abdominal operations.
More recently, there has been interest in less traumatic transluminal endoscopic surgical procedures. In transluminal endoscopic surgery, an endoscope is used to deliberately breach (puncture) the wall of the stomach or other organ to work within a body cavity such as the peritoneal cavity. Single point access surgery, is an advanced minimally invasive surgical procedure in which the surgeon operates almost exclusively through a single entry point, such as the patient's navel. In a transluminal endoscopic surgical procedure, a flexible endoscope (along with the required surgical tools) is inserted into the stomach, for example, through a natural anatomic opening. Once the endoscope reaches the access site in the stomach or other organ, the wall of the organ is punctured and the endoscope advanced into the body cavity where the remotely controlled surgical tools can be used to perform delicate surgical procedures. When the surgical procedure is completed, the endoscope and the tools are withdrawn through the aperture in the organ wall and the aperture is closed.
Although minimally invasive surgeries have tremendous potential in reducing trauma associated with surgical procedures, several important developments should be pursued before these procedures can be widely employed. One such development is a safe and effective method of approximating two tissue edges in the body cavity so that they can be stapled or otherwise joined together. Existing tissue approximation techniques only enable joining of two tissue edges which are already in close proximity to one another. There is often a need to bring one tissue edge from a first location to the location of a second tissue edge in order to join them, and thereby, initiate healing.